STORYBOARD: THE FIRST STEP

Translator

Hi guys! How are you? Spring is already here and a lot of fresh ideas come up.

     Today I'm going to explain a project that it's been  carried  out with some colleagues of mine. I'm sure that you know a learning strategy called "flipped classroom"whose main objective is to provide students the opportunity to apply their knowledge. Students become builders of their own learning so they play a main role in this teaching model .Videos are really useful in flipped classroom since you can introduce, review or  extend contents of any subject. Furthermore, videos can be used to show  how to solve a problem, do an experiment or present a challenge.Undoubtedly, the internet is a great source to find educational videos. However, sometimes, you don't find exactly what you need, so why don't create your own educational videos? It enables you to choose and  personalize the contents and how to convey them to children, at the same time you can adapt the content in order to build a project or a challenging task from it.

     I know, it sounds fun and it is indeed, but you need to bear in mind different stages to achieve the final outcome: the video. My colleagues and me recorded the video last day, but before that I' ll explain you the previous steps. A thorough storyboard is the key to get a successful educational video clip. It must include not only the script but also as many details as possible about how the scenes will be divided, customs and make-up of the characters, props, music,lighting or special effects. Regarding scenery, I recommend using a chroma key since it allows adding different kinds of backgrounds once you edit the video. This technique is much cheaper and handier than getting all the elements required to recreate a castle or a boat, for instance (I'll talk you about this in my next post).So a careful planning is needed to get a great video for our students.

     Since a lot of factors must be taken into account, each member of the group assumed a role like a drafter, a recorder, a community manager or an editor, although all of us were involved in each task. Working in group wasn't a problem for us because we had already taken part in collaborative projects previously. After the roles, we thought about which topic could be interesting and motivating for our students, we took a look at the Decree 89/2014, by which the curriculum of Primary Education in the Autonomous Community of Madrid is established, so that we could take some ideas. We agreed that the discovery of America was a perfect topic since it's complete, it can be linked to different subjects such as Maths (measures and distances, centuries), Geography (continents, oceans, seas, maps), Natural Science (magnetism) and it also contains voyages and adventures which are always appealing for children. Therefore, this topic offers a wide variety of possibilities to be worked in Primary classes.We made a brainstormig and we chose the best ideas, we thought that it would be fun and original to include some songs and talk about how the voyages were arranged at that time so we got down to work.We made our draft in a text document and also we used  StoryboardThat in order to organise the scenes in a more visual way. StoryboardThat is a tool to create online comics, as I told you in this postHere you have the storyboard of our video clip.

     This storyboard has been designed to show our students the way Christopher Columbus tried to get funds when he was attempting to travel to the Indias in a new route. Each frame depicts different scenes with the main steps Columbus followed until the beginning of the voyage.The project is intended for fifth graders. These are the main goals of the video: 

• To introduce the topic of the discovery of Americas in an interesting way.
• To be able to recognise the importance of Christopher Columbus in the history.
• To know the process leading to the final voyage.
• To understand why that kind of voyages were carried out.

Future purposes of the outcome are:

•  To explain the discovery of Americas.
• To differentiate the four voyages of Columbus to the New World.
• To know which inventions were used for navigating.

     I should like to add that it's been an enriching experience to work "hand in hand" with other colleagues and exchanging impressions and ideas with them. Well, as you can see this type of projects involves an elaborate process but it's worth the effort.

I hope you find it useful!

See you soon!